When It’s Not Working: Troubleshooting {EP 261}

Robyn: Sometimes our kids really do need to have skills scaffolded for them. It's so painful to be in the place where you can see it, but still feel like either you, one, can't keep yourself regulated enough, or two, you can't help your kids feel regulated, safe or connected to you or themselves fast enough. And so the behavior is still continuing and maybe even escalating. That's what we're gonna do in today's episode. We're really gonna troubleshoot that moment of this isn't working, and we're not going to do this troubleshooting through the lens of like, what are you doing wrong? Because that's not it at all. We're going to troubleshoot getting curious about the why that it's not working. What are we maybe overlooking? What did we initially put into place really well, but as things got better easier, behaviors decrease that we started to sort of lose some of the pieces that we'd put into place that were helping our kid be successful. That is a really common thing that I see. I see that happen in families. I see that happen in schools. I see it happen in my own family, that as things get better, we stop being so intentional and so thoughtful about having the kind of foundation or the structure in place that is what was allowing things to get better in the first place. And that's not anybody doing anything wrong. That's just perfectly normal humaning, and also helpful to notice so that we can kind of tighten things up or rein things in where we need to.

Robyn: Let's talk first about what it means to not work, and to talk about what it means to not not work we have. Have to acknowledge and remember that nervous system healing is really slow. It doesn't happen in a specific linear fashion, and a lot of change happens on the inside before we would ever see it happen on the outside. So sometimes that sense of like this isn't working can happen almost right on the cusp of us starting to see changes on the outside. Right we're getting to the point where we have shifted enough internally that it's about to make an impact on the behavior we see on the outside. But even if it's not, and it'd be pretty hard to know if we were at that cusp or not, it's just really important to remember that there is a lot of change that's happening. There's a lot of working that's happening that we might not be able to see or explicitly be able to note. That doesn't mean that it's not working. So I just want you to hold that in mind as we go through kind of like this troubleshooting checklist. We're not going to get real deep into the idea that things could be changing on the inside, but we don't see them on the outside yet. We're not going to get super deep into that. I just want you to hold it in mind while we do some more kind of practical troubleshooting today. Hey, we're going to talk today about why the dysregulated behavior is still happening. Why so much behavior is still coming from protection mode? And what can we do? And we are genuinely baffled ourselves, the answer is almost always found by getting really curious about the moment that the behavioral impulse fired, not the moment that we saw the behavior, or the moment that the behavior had an impact on someone else, but earlier inside the brain, inside the nervous system, and from a nervous system timeline, it's actually much earlier, even though our experience of it is that it's happening in micro moments. 

Robyn: They're happening so close to one another that they seem like they're happening at the same time the neural impulse and the actual behavior and the impact that it's having, it feels like they're all the same thing, but they're not. And if we get really, really, really granular, we can see that the behavioral impulse fires long before we see the behavior on the outside, and then the behavior has some kind of impact. I'm not going to talk today about all the things that go into the moment that behavioral impulse fires, but you can find a deep explanation of that in my episode, All Behavior Makes Sense. I'll make sure the link to that goes in the show notes, even when it seems really, really hard, we are going to work to stay grounded in our framework that regulated connected kids who feel safe and know what to do have the skills behave well. Again, defining what well or good means about behavior is a completely separate episode. Today. We're just going to go with regularly connected kids who feel safe and know what to do. They're doing okay. They're not prompting the grown ups in their lives, the parents or the professionals or the helpers to listen to podcasts about baffling behaviors. Okay, that framework outlines for us a troubleshooting map. Now it's not a flow chart. It's just kind of the beginnings of a map when behavior isn't okay, when behavior isn't the kind of behavior that is encouraging or promoting connection to themselves or to someone else, when behavior seems To be a huge behavior in comparison to the stressor, right when the when the stress response system is very, very sensitized when we're thinking about those behaviors, the ones that we really do want to change or get better, we have to reground in the reality that there's just something in the framework. 

Robyn: I hate to call it an equation, because I don't want it to seem that manipulatable. Is that a word? I don't want to I don't want to give the impression that this is a checklist, right? We're not going regulated, check, connected, check, safe, check. Has skills check, okay? Now everything should be fine. It's not a checklist. It's an invitation into curiosity, right? It helps us start troubleshooting what's missing. Where do we get curious which one or which combination of the four isn't quite in place? Okay? And again, those four things are regulation, connection to self and to others, felt safety and skills. So we're just gonna go one by one, and we're gonna start with regulation. Okay? So imagine a behavior that is still not shifting, right, that behavior that is leaving you feeling like, oh my gosh, this is not working. Okay, bring that behavior to mind, and let's think about it through the lens of regulation. We want to ask ourselves is, is the nervous system actually regulated enough in this moment to access all of the things we've been working on, all of the skills that we've been working on, all of the things that feels like your child has been learning, right is their nervous system, in this exact moment, regulated enough for it To be true, that all of that could be accessed, you got to be pretty regulated. Think about that from your own perspective. When you're trying to change a behavior, when are you most likely to be able to actually have the behavior that you're hoping to have? Is it when you're most regulated or most dysregulated? And the answer is, of course, when we're most regulated, that's when we can pause long enough to kind of reach in and access these newly laid pathways, right that are representative of the behavior that we're looking for. So some things we can get curious about are things like, Well, what's been happening in the minutes, hours, days leading up to this behavior? Has there been an accumulated stress load, right? Is the window of tolerance just been shrinking and shrinking and shrinking over the past, however, long again, minutes, hours, days, right? So the window of tolerance shrunk. 

Robyn: Shrink up so much that what could have been tolerated at a different time, or what skills they could have accessed at a different time, they just can't in this moment, right? Their window of tolerance has gotten too small, and they simply just can't access those things. And also think about if there's still some chronic dysregulation happening that's narrowing that window of tolerance, right? How sensitive is their stress response system? Are we looking at a kid who could be in their owl brain, but then whiplashes into attack watchdog or play dead possum, if we are seeing these big whiplashes, what we know is that we still have some work to do on strengthening that stress response system. Right? It's not just about growing skills or offering co-regulation in the moment is that there's still kind of global, overarching work to still be done on strengthening that stress response system. And it could be true that the stress response system just isn't strong enough yet, perhaps around this one specific behavior, one specific trigger, it's just not strong enough yet to have a stress response that more matches the actual stressor. That doesn't mean it's not ever going to be true, right? The nervous system is always building, growing, changing just means that we're not there yet. We also want to think about from a regulation perspective, is what does co-regulation look like specifically for this child and in this kind of a setting, what do we know about this unique child that is what they actually need, and is that the kind of co-regulation we're offering, or are we offering the kind of co-regulation that We think they need, or that feels best to us to offer those would be totally normal kind of traps to fallen into.

Robyn: We are always considering the needs of others, or kind of like, in a way, like, making a mental map of somebody else's experiences and needs. We do that first based on our own, like, that's kind of where we start from, and then from there, if we're regulated enough, if we're old enough, right? We can then consider what that person's unique needs are. So we're always assuming that what works for us. Would work for someone else. It takes a lot of regulation to kind of separate that from that, essentially like that way we project onto other people. It takes a lot of regulation, a lot of connection to self, to keep in mind what you know about regulation, and then stay open to what's actually happening with this specific child, like, right here in front of us, what do they actually need? Not what did they need five minutes ago? What would I need in this situation? But like, right now, what does this child actually need, and are we able to offer it? And then, of course, we always have to ask the question, like, are we regulated enough to be able to offer co-regulation so often in my own family, when I noticed that somebody else is struggling, right? And I thinking about, you know, the struggle through this lens, regulation, connection, felt safety, I ultimately sort of have to come back to the reality that, like, I've not been super regulated lately, and we all really impact each other. So if I'm bringing less regulation into the system, then it makes sense that the other people in the system, especially the more vulnerable people, right? Whoever it is, just like, maybe we have a partner with a vulnerable nervous system, or maybe you have kids, because kids are more vulnerable than grown-ups are, and then if you have a kid with a vulnerable nervous system, right? It just kind of all mounts on top of each other, right? And so it is true that our regulation and our own nervous system capacity impacts the whole system. 

Robyn: This isn't blame, this isn't shame. It's just about what's noticing what's true. We're just bringing coherence and understanding to what's true and what's happening so that we can begin to make a plan about how to impact everything, and that that plan can make sense, right? Like, if, if we as the adults are extremely dysregulated, and we focus all of our energy on getting that child regulated through like environmental factors, for example, we are really missing a really key point, right? Or, I see this happen a lot, if we are really thinking about, you know, helping a child feel safe and regulated from, you know, the inside world, like, what's happening for them? Are they're fed? Are they, you know, thirsty? Have they had enough sleep? You know, what's How's their immune system? How is their, you know, connection to the grown-ups, right? We're thinking about all these things, but we are ignoring something that is always there, like we are parenting a kid who holds a marginalized or oppressed identity, right? Maybe we're parenting a kid of color, and we live in a community in which our kid of color has no mirrors, we have to really consider those things. It's just simply not fair to the child to keep trying to increase regulation or connection or felt safety, while ignoring these other really significant things that are happening for them and that are impacting their nervous system. So regulation isn't just about what's happening in that moment, it could be, but it's also about what's happening outside those moments, right? Like, what is the nervous system carrying around and what things are happening over the course of hours, days, weeks that are depleting that window of tolerance and leaving the stress response system feeling really sensitized and really vulnerable.

Robyn: Okay? So then the second thing we want to troubleshoot is felt safety. Remember, felt safety has these three buckets inside, outside, between, and I'm not going to go into the buckets of felt safety. We're not going to talk all about inside, outside, between. I have an entire podcast series about felt safety. Can do one entire episode about the inside one, about the outside one, about the between. So we're not going to do that here. What I do want to highlight is the importance of getting curious about these three buckets, like in this moment when this child is struggling, what's in their inside bucket? What's happening inside their body, right? What's in their outside bucket, what's in the environment, what is the environment asking of their nervous system? And what's in the between space is something in the relational space activating or pulling the child into protection mode could be super subtle things. And again. And that doesn't mean you're doing something wrong. We are not here to place blame. It's completely unhelpful and irrelevant. We are here to just collect data so that we can put energy on creating the shifts that are going to be most impactful to our kids and to our families. So from a felt safety perspective, and we're thinking, oh my gosh, this isn't working. We really want to pause and think about those three buckets. And are we paying attention to all three? Were we paying attention to all three? But we've let you know some of it kind of start to slide a little right. Really think about inside, outside, in between, and then be really deliberate when possible, about adding drops of safety to each bucket. Now, if you're listening and you are a member of the club, remember that we have that growing a child's owl brain with felt safety packet workbook. It's extensive, y'all right, it's like 40 pages, and it really helps you gain some clarity around what lives in your child's stream of the now, what lives in their stream of the past, and what kinds of things can we add into the stream of the now that can help their nervous system feel safe when it is safe. 

Robyn: So y'all in the club remember that lives in the resource library, and it's a very practical workbook, like with blanks to fill in and things like that. So whenever we're troubleshooting like, Why isn't this working? That should be one of the first things we do go to that packet and look at what is happening in, the inside, outside, between and where can we increase cues of safety? Or where were cues of safety increased previously that we've kind of fallen off with. The third piece we want to troubleshoot then is connection. And connection has like two subsets, connection to themselves and connection to others. So let's start with thinking about our child's sense of connection to others, to you, to their teacher, you know, to the other grown ups who are caring for them and to even their peers, right? Is their relational tank pretty full? Are they feeling connected to you or to the other grown-ups caring for them? Are they experiencing connections with their peers? And now I totally get that your kids behaviors could be impacting their peer relationships. And so it's this big, like never-ending cycle of your child's behaviors are kind of pushing their peers away, and the more isolated your child fears, the more their behavior escalates, and the more their peers don't want to be with them, right? And this is big, huge, just kind of muck, right? There are things we could do to tend to that. That's not what we're talking about in today's episode. Today, we're just talking about the troubleshooting and getting clear on which lever do we want to pull or which bucket do we want to focus on. Think about the grown up that's in charge in these moments when your child is struggling the most, what's happening in that relationship. And then think about is your child close enough to a regulated adult

Robyn: in order for their nervous system to experience the kind of regulation that we're hoping that they'll be able to experience so that we can see the behavior that we're hoping for. Right is that child close enough to a regulated adult? So often, when I hear about kids struggling, they're in circumstances where a regulated adult either isn't nearby, or a regulated adult is responsible for a lot of people, or a regulated adult, adult is distracted, like, during a transition, for example, right? We're all trying to leave the house. I'm taking a few moments to think about my own stuff, right? Like, do I have my keys? Do I have my sunglasses? Is where's my purse? Like, is there gas in the car, right? Like, I'm thinking about all those things, which is a momentary kind of drop in being connected to my child, who I was trying to, like, offer some structure and co-regulation through as we moved through this transition. Okay, so is your child? You know, is there a regulated adult nearby is that regulated adults have a lot of kids that they're, you know, trying to support or and or does that regulated adult having an experience that is kind of shifting their attention away? Again, nobody's doing anything wrong. These are just places that we can look at and notice, oh, we can make some adjustments here. Year, decreasing the distance for our kids who are struggling is one of the top strategies or interventions. I'll start with that when kids aren't doing well, when they're not making great quote, unquote choices, when they're acting in a way that's leaving us feeling like we can't trust them. 

Robyn: Oftentimes, what is true is that the child has gotten too far away from a regulated adult. They don't have enough internalized regulation to be able to hold on to their owl brain given everything else that's happening. This is what it looks like, or this is the explanation for that moment where you kind of feel like the moment I turn my back, my kid just does whatever they want. Well, the moment the co-regulation drops their owl brain can't stay in charge, and then yeah, like impulses and I want what I want, no matter the impact on other people, right? That start, that stuff takes over. The reason those things don't run our lives is not because we are a better human, but it's because we're more regulated. We have more internalized regulation. So almost always, when kids are really struggling, we do need to think about, how do we decrease the distance? How do I get this kid, like in literal, more physical proximity to a regulated adult, and yeah, sometimes that just looks like, how do I get this kid more supervision? One of my very first podcast episodes was about like building the Tower of self-regulation and looking at this idea of trust, and what does that really mean in general, but certainly with kids who have a lot of vulnerability in their nervous system? That's a very, very old episode. We're going all the way back to the beginning in that one. I'll make sure that Link gets down in the show notes.

Robyn: Then we want to think about, is my child connected to themselves, is my child present enough with themselves? Now the reality is, is that that being connected to yourself also requires some regulation and some sense of safety. So a lot of these things all work together. It's really hard to isolate them. But one of the top things I think about when I think about kids being in connection to themselves, is, does your kid have enough understanding of their own brain, brain and nervous system to have a felt sense about what's happening inside of them? It's so important that we teach our kids about their own nervous system. I of course, like the owl, watchdog possum metaphor, but the metaphor is largely irrelevant, just something that helps your kids make sense of what's happening for them in a non-judgmental way. That's why I use owls Watch Dogs possums, because they become parts of ourselves that we can befriend, parts of ourselves that we can look at and go, Oh, what you're doing makes sense. You're trying to help me. You're trying to protect me. It's not working. There's a lot of unintended consequences here, but I get what you're trying to do that we can befriend the watchdog and the possum, which is actually a really crucial step in all of this. It is truly non-negotiable. There has to be some way for the nervous system and the mind of your child to kind of be with their most dysregulated parts of selves and stay regulated at the same time, like they have to bring their owl brain to their watchdog and possum brain. Now you have a kiddo who might be like years and years and years away from actually being able to do that. It's a pretty advanced skill, for lack of better language, lots and lots of integration in the brain and mind and regulation needs to be on board before there can be the capacity to bring our own regulated and compassion itself to the parts of ourselves that aren't regulated. 

Robyn: So your child might be a long way off from that, but we're building the we're laying the building blocks now. We're laying the foundation now by teaching our kids about their own brain and nervous system without shame, right? We want them to have an understanding of why they're doing what they're doing, so that they can eventually believe I'm a great kid who's really struggling when a child has no language or framework for what's really happening inside of them, connection to themselves is going to be very limited. Okay? So then the fourth thing we want to look at when we're really troubleshooting why something isn't, quote, unquote, working, is, does my child have the skill that they. Need to be able to do this. Now, this one's really hard, because it's easy to assume a child has a skill when what they really have is knowledge of a skill. But having a knowledge of a skill and a skill are not the same thing. Having an actual skill requires a significant amount of practice. The other truth is that for the most part, the skills that we are hoping our child will access and utilize live in their owl brain, which means we have to strengthen their entire regulation network so that they can experience some stress and still stay connected to their owl brain. Our kids can't access their skills because they get so quickly and so intensely dysregulated that their owl brain flies away instantaneously and as we work long term to strengthen their regulation, to strengthen their sense of felt safety, we will slow down how fast their owl brain flies away. And if their owl brain can hang on just a little bit longer and not just bolt the second, there's some stress, that's when our kids will be able to access their skills, skills that are learned, and most of them are and kind of stored in a regulated part of the brain can't be accessed in dysregulated moments. That's the basic fundamental of Dr Perry's work on state-dependent functioning, right? Our functioning, our behaviors, our thoughts, all of that things. 

Robyn: Our functioning depends on our state. The more kids get dysregulated behaviors that they've had in the past. Younger behaviors, more reactive behaviors, those behaviors come to the forefront. The more dysregulated our kids get, the brain becomes reactive. So they're not thinking about the future, they're just thinking about right now. And probably, if we really got down to it, the skill that they're using right it doesn't look like a skill, it just looks like some reactive, reflexive behavior, but we could look at it as a skill, and the skill that they're using in that moment solves the now problem, the like in that moment problem, it's just causing more problems in the future, right? So we want to get really curious about like, Does my child actually really have the skill that I'm hoping for, right? Frustration, tolerance, cooperation, waiting a turn, those kinds of things. Do they actually have the skill, or do they just have information about the skill? Do they just have knowledge about the skill? And when we are hoping they'll use those skills, how regulated are they? Because if we've got a pretty dysregulated kid, they're not going to be accessing their skills of frustration tolerance or impulse control, right? Or, you know, complex social skills, they're just not right. They're too dysregulated for that. So even if they know them, they're too dysregulated to access them. Part of then what we have to think about is, how do we scaffold that skill as we start with a lot of intense co-regulation at the foundation, we let their capacity right for that skill grow gradually, and as their capacity grows, we slowly reduce the amount of co-regulation or structure or support that we're offering. This is a very, very, very slow process, and we absolutely can scaffold skills that seem like relational, skills like pausing before reacting, frustration, tolerance, tolerating disappointment, using words to ask for what they need, expressing themselves without being totally dysregulated. 

Robyn: These seem like relational skills or, quote, unquote, soft skills, but we can scaffold these skills. Now. How to do that is beyond the scope of this specific episode, which is all about kind of troubleshooting what's not working, but we can scaffold those. And a lot of times when I see a kid who is really struggling with something, it could be like a chore, you know, cleaning up their bedroom. It could be talking respectfully to an adult. It could be, you know, using age-appropriate social skills so often as I'm, you know, working with a family to really kind of figure out, like, what's the missing link here? Often what we find is that there's just a lack of scaffolding. And I love it when we find that, because that feels like a targetable plan, like we can make a plan. I. Scaffold a skill. So y'all, when something isn't working, we're not going back to the drawing board. Okay? We're not going back to punishments. Are the only thing that work. If we do go back to that, it's actually because we've gotten dysregulated and we have fallen back into

Robyn: older neural networks, right beliefs we had before. Because as we get dysregulated, we fall back into those places, just like our kids do, okay, or we fall back into what we learned as kids. So what I typically see when parents are ready, like, throw in the towel, go back to the drawing board, is that they're dysregulated themselves, and so they've just gone back to different parts of their brain. We want to remember that behavior is giving us really important information, and we got to look very closely at what's happening to see which piece or which pieces of the equation need more attention right now. Where do we want to give our energy? What lever needs to be pulled? The question isn't, what should I do about this behavior, but it's, what does this nervous system need so that their success can become more and more inevitable? And it's inevitable because we believe in the goodness of our kids. It's inevitable because we know that the nervous system is longing for the owl brain to be in charge. And when we ask this question, What Does my child need for their success to be inevitable? That keeps us in our owl brain, which is exactly where we need to be able to help and remember, of course, that just because you are not yet seeing the behavior change that you're hoping for, that doesn't actually mean that it's not working. Right? Not working, could actually be working, but we just can't see it yet, right? There is a lot of internal change. There's a lot of change that happens in the brain and in the nervous system and in a person's sense of safety. 

Robyn: There's a lot that changes before we actually can see the change. So the places we're considering when we're doing troubleshooting is regulation, felt safety, connection to themselves and to others, and skill and do we need more scaffolding in the skill now? Y'all, if you are in the club, I have created a troubleshooting worksheet. This is true. So if you're in the club, or if you're one of my immersion program students or alumni, you have access to this kind of troubleshooting worksheet as well, so that there can be so. So they should have some support in gaining some clarity. When we're, you know, assessing, like, Why isn't this working? We're going to make sure that resource, that troubleshooting worksheet, is in the resource library. Y'all. If you're listening to this episode, like on Tuesday morning, when the episode's released, it might not be there yet, it's brand new, and we are working on getting in, getting it into the resource library. So if it's not there yet, just have a little patience. We're getting it there. But if you're listening to this episode at all in the future, then, and you're in the club, or you're an immersion program student or alumni, just go to the resource library and it's there. Y'all, I mentioned a ton of other resources in this podcast episode today, I will do my very, very best to make sure that everything I mentioned is down in the show notes, like all my other podcasts I've mentioned, is down in the show notes. If I have a free resource that you don't have yet, so not the resources that are in the club, but just one of my free resources that you don't have yet. Go and make yourself an account over my free resource hub. That way you just get all of them you don't have to worry about. Did I request that one? Do I have that one? Where did I store it? Just go make your account. RobynGobbel.com/freeresourcehub. All the free resources are right there again, y'all. If you're a member of the club or an immersion program, student or alumni, you you also do have access, of course, that free resource hub. But where you're going to want to go look at is the resource library, which is our full, extensive, you know, library of all of the resources that I've created over the years, if you're a new listener, my book raising kids with big baffling behaviors is available wherever you buy books online, you can get it paperback, ebook or audio. My guided journal for raising kids with big baffling behaviors is coming soon. 

Robyn: That publication date just keeps getting closer and closer. It is set to publish September 21 so we're a few months out from that. But it can be pre-ordered. You can pre-order it again wherever you buy books online, but if you pre-order from my local bookstore, you can get a signed copy, and there are instructions on how to do that over on my website. Okay, y'all, I think that's everything. I'm sure I've forgotten things. This is a long episode. There is a lot of information here in this episode. It was really dense. I hope that this is feeling helpful for how to start really getting curious about that question, why isn't this working? And again, if you have raising kids with big, baffling behaviors, you can go to chapter seven and see how I worked through that with Nat. And if you're a professional, you can sign up for my Making Sense of Baffling Behaviors free audio training. It will happen. May four through eight, right? 45678, yep, May 4 through eighth, 2026, and you can register for that at Robyn gobbel.com/baffling behaviors. And this is kind of what we do in that audio training as well. We get deep into kind of why I'm doing with Nat, what I'm doing through the lens of like, what's happening for me, what's happening for Nat, and what's happening for their kiddo, whose name in the book is Sammy. So lots of places you and I can connect. I have a couple in person trainings coming up as well. You can find all of that over at Robyn gobbel.com/training, so so so much that's coming up, where you and I may be able to connect, or I may able to offer some support to you and your family. And of course, a new episode here on The Baffling Behavior Show is released every Tuesday, so I will be with you again next week. Bye, bye.